The Salesforce Winter ’25 Release Notes are out, and they include important features for trailblazers who are on the Salesforce platform. 

We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Winter. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways. 

Each release contains a substantial amount of information on a variety of products so it can often be daunting for admins or other trailblazers to find the features that are important to them and their organization.  Our team reviewed the notes for you and highlighted the following platform features as those for you to keep your eyes on the lookout when the release hits your Salesforce environments in the coming months.

Platform Highlights from the Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release

Those who use the Salesforce platform are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release. 

Some updates are changing the way we work to meet evolving technology demands. Others are saving us time by connecting the dots in a logical way.  Our team will guide you through these features so you will know how to take action on them before the release hits your Production org.

Highlight #1: Verifications Needed to Continue Sending Emails From Salesforce

The Winter ‘25 release will require customers to Create and Verify Your Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address to Send Email and Verify Your Return Email Address for Sender Verification in order to continue allowing Users and/or automations to send emails from Salesforce.

If you Users do utilize any email functionality within Salesforce it will be important to instruct them to visit their ‘My Email Settings’ so they can verify the email address associated with their User account.  Similarly, overall as an organization, you will need to ensure there is a customer-defined Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address moving forward.

Although the Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address feature will be enforced this release, the individual Return Email Address verification will not be enforced until Spring ‘25.

Highlight #2: Salesforce Archive (Pilot)

Salesforce recently announced their acquisition of Own Company, currently known as the most credible Salesforce archive and backup third-party tool, however, they have also announced a pilot of their own Archive product.  If your team needs assistance with archival management of your data but either cannot afford a third-party tool or do not have time/resources to implement one of those tools, Salesforce Archive might be a solution to consider.

When Salesforce Archive becomes generally available, you can use it in production and sandbox environments, however the product is available in sandboxes as a pilot right now and can be requested to be enabled by your AE.  The product will become available to production orgs on a rolling basis starting in November 2024, but when it’s released for production use, it will need to be purchased as an add-on license.

Highlight #3: New Salesforce Platform Login License

The Salesforce Platform Login license allows you to assign access to custom apps built on Platform for internal users without the requirement to buy a seat-based license. With the Salesforce Platform Login license, you can pay per daily unique login for users who need infrequent or occasional access. 

This new license will become available starting October 15th for customers on Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.  Contact your AE to learn more about pricing details for these new licenses and to determine if they’re a right fit for your organization.

Highlight #4: User Permissions Updates

Improvement #1: See How Object Access Is Granted in Object Manager

The Winter ‘25 release continues with updates to ensure Salesforce Administrators are able to troubleshoot their User’s access and permission issues easier. One of these new features is the ability to use the Object Access Summary in Object Manager to quickly check object permissions when troubleshooting, completing reviews, or determining how to grant user access.

Improvement #2: Get Insight into How a User’s Permissions Are Granted

Last release we were able to access a Summary of an individual’s access and permissions directly from the user details record.  This enabled you to see what a user had access to without having to spend multiple clicks checking each profile, permission set, public group, or queue.

The Winter ‘25 release expands on that feature by including an additional feature to allow you to see what grants the User that particular permissions (i.e. via Profile or Permission Set) in case you need to revoke those permissions.

Highlight #5: Salesforce Flow Updates

You may have heard the phrase “Flow is the future” in Salesforce messaging over the past few years. This is because Salesforce is consistently releasing new Flow features to support the retirement of Process Builder and Workflow Rules in recent years. 

Here are some of our favorites from this release.

Improvement #1: New Errors and Warnings Pane in Flow Builder

The new Errors and Warnings pane lists issues that prevent you from saving and activating your flow as you work in an easy to scan format. This feature will be automatically available when trying to activate a Flow with errors following the release.

Improvement #2: Flow Design Tips

Another new feature within the Winter ‘25 release is the inclusion of new tips in Flow Builder to help you identify designs that can slow down your flows and increase the risk of reaching Apex governor limits.  This may not seem like much to some of us that have been building Flows for a couple years now, but this is a game changer for new Flow builders who are uncomfortable with the tool at first.

Improvement #3: Create or Update Records Efficiently with the Create Records Element

Last release we saw the beginning of an upsert feature within Flow Builder through the release of a new way to check against duplicates for a single record.  Well the Winter ‘25 releases further enhances this feature by enabling the upsert functionality against multiple records at once.  You’re able to compare against existing records with a Salesforce Id, External Id, or other field on the object.  

The Create Records element makes the process of saving records easier and faster, as you no longer check separately for existing records because the create and update elements are now merged into one element.  Admins can now configure and maintain flows more easily while reducing potential errors from separate operations.

Improvement #4: Send Email Action Expanded

Two new enhancements have come to the ‘Send Email’ Action within Flow Builder. First, you are now able to include email addresses to include as cc or bcc on the email that is sent via the Flow. Any address entered in the CC field receives a copy of the email, and those in the BCC field also receive a copy, but their email addresses are hidden from all recipients. Secondly, there is an increase of the number of recipients you can include from originally 5 to now 150 recipients.

Highlight #6: Conditional Formatting on Record Pages

As Salesforce continues to push customers from Page Layouts to Lightning Record Pages, they continue to release new features in the Lightning App Builder to excite customers into the move.  Now customers will be able to give fields on Dynamic Forms-enabled pages custom icons and colors that can appear, disappear, and change color based on the criteria and rules that you define.  This can be a game changer for those of us who have previously created formula fields to manage or provide this functionality in the past.

Highlight #7: Account Plans

This feature is one our team is very interested in learning more about as new information is released as it can be a huge game changer for Sales teams.  The Account Plans feature provides a new UX providing a complete picture of the account with information such as metrics, objectives with actionable metrics, and tabs on growth and development, all from one repository within Salesforce.  

This feature will become available in Production on a rolling basis after the Winter ’25 release is complete and available to all customers in mid- to late November 2024.  Customers available to receive this feature are those with Enterprise, Performance, or Unlimited editions.

Once the feature becomes available in your Production org, go to the new Account Plans page in Setup and turn on Account Plans. Then, configure the Account Plans object in the Object Manager, add the Account Plans related list to the Account object, and optionally set up Relationship Maps.

Highlight #8: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Updates

Please check out my colleague Erin Duncan’s blog post on all things Pardot from the Winter ’25 release.

Additional Highlight: Marketing Cloud Growth Updates

Erin Duncan has also written posted on some exciting announcements coming to Salesforce’s newest marketing product:

• Salesforce Winter ‘25 Highlights: Marketing Cloud Growth Edition
• Announcing Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition

Salesforce is getting bigger and better all the time

Trailblazers who come to Salesforce are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release get everyone closer to those goals by saving them time and resources.

Contact the team at Sercante to get help implementing these enhancements in your Salesforce org. And leave us a comment below to let us know what you think about the Winter ‘25 Release.

Original article: Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release: Platform Highlights

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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Those of you who have been followers of The Spot for a few years now know that we have shared our favorite Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Ideas from the Salesforce IdeaExchange either in blog posts or the Pardashians Slack group.  

This tradition started in 2017 with Andrea’s initial post highlighting 8 ideas on the IdeaExchange that Pardot admins should upvote.  We’ve seen great features come to life in the most recent Salesforce releases (looking at Conditional Options for Completion Actions), and we’re hoping you can help prioritize ideas for future releases.

Salesforce has three releases throughout the year and uses their IdeaExchange to help drive which features are prioritized in future releases. As a marketer, you have most likely entered a situation where your team is requesting a solution that is currently not available in Marketing Cloud Engagement or Marketing Cloud Account Engagement as a feature. 

Your first stop is to see if this feature/solution has been mentioned or resolved via the IdeaExchange. Checking there first is going to help you understand how others have solved it, and then you can add in your own vote to the idea.

What is the Salesforce IdeaExchange anyway?

Back in 2006, the Salesforce #Ideaexchange was born as a way to involve its customers (big and small) in a modern effort to crowdsource ideas for its product roadmap. This ensures the community gets a platform to contribute their ideas and wishes — you know, a place where the margods can go for inspiration if you will as they build the world of tomorrow.

How does one enter their idea into the Salesforce IdeaExchange?

• Come up with an idea and submit it to the exchange
• You then get trapped and spend 2-4 hours going through other people’s ideas (definitely optional, but highly encouraged). 
• If your idea gets enough votes (10+ points for you) then a product manager gets involved
• The idea is developed and then delivered, and we all cheer!

Need more details? We wrote a little about the history of the AppExchange.

Top Salesforce IdeaExchange items for marketers

As Salesforce continues to work on improving their marketing automation platforms, our team has put together a list of ideas that we recommend you upvoting and adding to your wish list in hopes of getting them added to the top of the prioritization list.

Here is our current list of Salesforce IdeaExchange items that marketers should check out and upvote.

Salesforce

1. Ability to Customize Campaign Member Status Values for all Campaigns

This feature would help with needing to update campaign member statuses for each individual campaign. We wrote about how to fix this with Protected Campaign Member Statuses.

Upvote >>

Marketing Cloud Engagement

1. Access to a Marketing Cloud Engagement Developer Edition

This feature would help trailblazers gain hands-on experience working within Marketing Cloud Engagement without being a customer.

Upvote >>

2. Include Dynamic Links in Engagement Split Activity

This feature would ensure Journey Builder engagement splits based on clicks can monitor the clicks on any dynamic link as well as static links.

Upvote >>

3. Access to a Recycle Bin in Marketing Cloud Engagement

This feature would give Marketing Cloud Engagement admins the same abilities as the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement recycle bin.

Upvote >>

4. Include the “De-Duplicate by Email Address” Feature in Journey Builder

This feature would give users the same abilities they have when sending a normal email through Marketing Cloud Engagement.

Upvote >>

5. Allow Data Extensions as Suppression Lists in Journey Builder

This feature would allow marketers to use data extensions for suppression lists in Journey Builder instead of lists.

Upvote >>

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

1. Track and Record Direct Replies to an Email Sent from Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

This feature would provide an additional, much needed KPI for marketers to be able to determine which CTAs are working for their emails that do not go directly to links or forms.

Upvote >>

2. Reduce Errors Post-Sending Email

This feature would allow you to either recall or edit emails that have not been opened yet after an email is sent with an error.

Upvote >>

3. Allow or Operational Email Sending in Engagement Programs

This feature would bring the operational email checkbox to the entire Engagement Program or individual Email steps to ensure those who need to receive these emails still are even when in an Engagement Program.

Upvote >>

4. Audit changes to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Assets

This feature would bring a tool similar to what Salesforce Admins have available to them to be able to view all changes made to lists and assets throughout Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.

Upvote >>

5. Allow Variable Fields in SFDC Tasks

This feature would allow for more variability and customization when creating a Salesforce Task from within Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.

Upvote >>

6. Notifications for SFDC Connector Errors

This feature would bring forth a notification system for your team to understand when there are Connector errors between Salesforce and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.

Upvote >>

7. BRING BACK “PARDOT”

This feature needs no explanation as many people are hoping we can reverse the name rebrand and move back to calling the tool “Pardot” at some point in the future.

Upvote >>

Analytics

1. Ability to Include Cross Filters in Report Filter Logic

This feature would allow users to be able to use standard filters and cross filters together in a report with filter logic.

Upvote >>

2. Reporting on Email Activity from Salesforce Inbox or Standard Inbox Integrations

This feature would bring email activity into the Activity records to allow for reporting between emails and other activities.

Upvote >>

3. Allow Reference Lines on Dashboard Components

This feature would bring an amazing reporting feature to dashboards so marketers can include reference lines on any report chart within a dashboard.

Upvote >>

We Want to Hear From You!

While some Pardot admin recommendations get picked up and implemented faster than others, it all depends on community participation and perceived need from the Marketing Cloud product team. In fact, to help drive ideas, Salesforce created a prioritization system where you can see top feature suggestions across the ecosystem battle it out!

Are there any features or functionality you wish you could see? If so, let us know below. With a little bit of luck and support from your Salesforce Ohana, you might also uncover the secrets of the IdeaExchange and get your idea on the scoreboard.Don’t forget to vote for these ideas, submit your own and chat with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or simply subscribe to the blog. 

Original article: Marketing Goodies from the Salesforce IdeaExchange: Spring ‘23

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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It’s been a few weeks since Andrea Tarrell and I spoke at Salesforce World Tour NYC about the journey to getting Salesforce certified. As someone with five years of experience in the ecosystem, I have been able to earn many Salesforce certifications along the way and have always wanted to help others achieve their certification goals as they have helped me. 

That’s why I am still so happy I was able to join Andrea as a co-presenter. Our team was excited to share our certification journeys and knowledge with the community, and we hope this post that recaps our World Tour presentation is helpful as you work toward earning Salesforce certified designations.

Salesforce Certified 101

If you’ve been in the ecosystem for a little bit, then you’re probably familiar with the process of becoming Salesforce certified and what certifications are available. But, you should still pay attention. 

The Salesforce certification program is constantly evolving. What used to be a collection of a handful of certifications has expanded to over 40 certifications across Salesforce roles over the years. The certifications are typically connected to a specific role customer and partner role persona that Salesforce has defined.

Salesforce Certified Persona Roles

 Salesforce certified personas are spread across six roles:

• Admin
• Developer
• Marketer
• Designer
• Consultant
• Architect

These certifications are globally recognized achievements that Trailblazers can earn to highlight their expertise and skills in a specific topic or product. Varying in skill level from the initial Salesforce Administrator exam up to the Technical Architect board review, there are plenty of certifications for you to consider in your journey. 

Check out the amazing visual on this page, which our friends at SalesforceBen put together to highlight the different certification pathways available to you.

Certification Exam Details

Each exam typically consists of 60-65 multiple choice questions. You’ll notice that each exam provides a specific percentage of questions you need to answer correctly to successfully pass the exam. 

These passing percentages are important to pay attention to as you prepare for your exam date. For example, you may be able to pass the Data Architect exam with only 58% of the questions correct, but the newer Business Analyst certification needs 72% correct for you to pass. 

For those who have attempted exams but might not have passed, some exams are moving toward just 3 multiple choice answers for each question and could make the experience easier for those who have a hard time picking the best answer for each question.

Why Should You Get Salesforce Certified?

So now you have some knowledge of what Salesforce certifications are, but you might be wondering “why should I bother getting certified?” 

Boost Your Career

As mentioned earlier, Salesforce certifications are widely recognized and can even potentially help when transitioning into other careers. That’s because they showcase transferable industry skills. They are also considered a resume-worthy accomplishment that will definitely help you stand out in the job market. 

According to a survey from the 2022-23 Mason Frank Careers and Hiring Guide, 86% of respondents said Salesforce certifications help professionals stand out in a competitive job market, and 90% of Salesforce certified respondents said their certifications make them more marketable. 

Source: Mason Frank

Prove it to Yourself

For myself and many others, certifications have become a source of personal gratification. If you are doubting yourself when it comes to a specific topic, it’s amazing when you’re able to prove to yourself and to others that you have the knowledge of that Salesforce topic. 

It is worth noting that going after a Salesforce certification with minimal experience is not usually advised as a certification can never stand in the way of actual experience of a Salesforce product/feature. Finally, certifications showcase your commitment to your personal and professional development and can ultimately provide you an opportunity to boost your earning potential.

Story Time! How We Got Our Salesforce Certifications

Andrea and I have had very different experiences when it came to our Salesforce journeys, as with everyone else. But I love that our journeys have slightly connected as we both strive to provide the best experience to our clients at Sercante. 

I knew who Andrea was, especially since we were both based in Atlanta for two years. But I never imagined working for her company or speaking next to her at a Salesforce event. 

This is why I love when trailblazers share their journeys; people realize that they can have similar experiences as long as they show a willingness to learn and lean on the community. Who knows, maybe you’ll join us at Sercante in the future as well… (we’re hiring!)

Andrea’s Certification Journey

Andrea Tarrell, CEO and founder of Sercante and The Spot, began her Salesforce career as most of us have: as an accidental admin. 

Working as the one-woman marketing department for an insurance brokerage, Andrea was tasked with learning Salesforce at HNI Risk as the company didn’t have a Salesforce administrator at the time.

Andrea wasn’t interested in getting a certification during this time because she didn’t see the value in them. But, she started to appreciate the Salesforce ecosystem when she caught the Salesforce bug at Dreamforce in 2011. “Without exaggeration, attending Dreamforce was truly a pivotal moment in my career trajectory,” Andrea said. This was also her first introduction to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), and the experience led her to implementing Pardot at HNI shortly after.

Joining the Salesforce Partner Community

During the Summer of 2016, Andrea decided to leave the Wisconsin area to head down to Atlanta, Georgia without any jobs or friends in place. She later joined the Salesforce partner, Configuro, as the Pardot practice lead and director of marketing and suddenly had a reason to get certified. 

Salesforce consultancies usually request their employees get certain certifications to determine their tier ranking in the Salesforce AppExchange. So, Andrea knew she had to make up for lost time. 

Over the course of a year at Configuro, she achieved six Salesforce certifications, including the retired Marketing Cloud Social Specialist certification. During this time, she also leaned on the Trailblazer Community heavily to network as much as she could.

Founding a Salesforce Consulting Firm

After starting The Spot for Pardot (now officially The Spot) in September 2017, Andrea started to consider opening up her own consultancy as well. Sercante was born and has grown into a nearly 70-employee consultancy with expertise in Salesforce, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), Marketing Cloud Engagement (OG Marketing Cloud/Exact Target), and various other services such as analytics and digital services. 

Andrea noticed a new fire to continue learning things relevant to her clients early on and achieved an additional six certifications over the course of a few months. She has also been named a Salesforce MVP as well as a Salesforce Marketing Champion and serves on a few Partner Advisory Boards as she continues to strive to make marketers successful on the Salesforce platform.

Still not sure about getting Salesforce certified? Read Andrea’s hot take on the value of certifications in this blog post.

My Certification Journey

Similar to Andrea, my Salesforce career began right out of college when I moved down to Atlanta, Georgia to join the Atlanta Braves as a CRM and Analytics Trainee. 

The Braves were using Microsoft Dynamics at the time, and they were beginning their migration to Salesforce. While completing data analysis tasks, I started to learn Salesforce on my own when I saw a need within the organization. 

Getting Promoted to an Accidental Admin Role

By the time we went live with the implementation in July 2018, I was promoted to CRM specialist and served as the Salesforce and Pardot admin while working closely with the newly hired Salesforce developer. I went for my first certification in December of that year. Then I tackled three more in an effort to prove to myself and my coworkers that I was worthy of the Salesforce and Pardot admin role. 

When I decided to move on from my role at the Atlanta Braves, I took three certifications in the same weekend (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Advanced Admin) to bolster my resume for future roles right before I left Atlanta.

Focusing on Community

In December 2019, I moved back up to Boston, Massachusetts with no job prospects in place. Thankfully, I was able to find a job with my alma mater, Northeastern University. 

During this time, I took a step back from my focus on learning to focusing on getting more involved in the Salesforce community. I was happy to serve as a co-leader of the Boston Women in Tech community group. 

The community group leadership role inspired me to apply for a spot in the inaugural Salesforce Marketing Champion class, to which I was accepted. It was definitely a shock to me at the time since I was no longer in a marketing-related role when I worked at Northeastern. That’s why I worked to earn my Pardot Consultant certification.  I wanted to prove that I was worthy of being a Marketing Champion. 

After achieving the Pardot Consultant certification, I earned one more certification during two years at Northeastern: Education Cloud Consultant. I ended my time with Northeastern just one certification shy of my ultimate 10 certification goal.

Becoming a Salesforce Consultant

Now onto my third and current Salesforce job. I started my consulting career with Sercante in September 2021. I came in with certification goals in mind, but working at Sercante has provided me with a new perspective on certifications. 

My focus should not only be on my personal growth, but also on the company’s growth as we look to take on new clients with different needs. I went for three certifications in the first few months to reach my goal of 10 and display some of the more recent experience I had, such as Experience Cloud from Northeastern, and Nonprofit Cloud from my first major Salesforce implementation at Sercante.

Now as I have moved into a more technical role at Sercante and have failed exams that I was nowhere ready to take (looking at you CPQ Specialist), my career and certification goals have become more defined. I am now looking to move toward the Application Architect and B2B Solution Architect certifications over the next year while continuing to learn new features and products to serve my clients’ needs. 

If you want to learn more about my overall Salesforce journey and my answer to the commonly asked question: “Can someone have too many certifications?” stay tuned for more articles from me. You can also get my take on how to keep imposter syndrome at bay in this blog post.

Tips for Success

Now that you’ve learned about Andrea’s and my certification journey, you may be wondering what certification you should work toward. While I believe everyone’s journey is different and do not need to follow the same path, we wanted to highlight which certifications are best to start with depending on which role path makes the most sense for you.

Which Salesforce Certification to Earn First

Here’s where you should start on your Salesforce certification path depending on the type of role you currently hold or are looking to fill.

Everyone —> Salesforce Associate
Awesome Admin —> Salesforce Administrator
Daring Developers —> Platform Developer 1
Dream Designer —> User Experience Designer
Moment Marketer —> Marketing Cloud Administrator / Pardot Specialist
Confident Consultant —> Business Analyst
All-Star Architect —> Platform App Builder

Regardless of which role path you take, we also recommend that you start with the new Salesforce Associate certification as a great introduction to the Salesforce platform as a whole. Read a guide to earning that certification in this blog post.

How to Study for Salesforce Certification Exams

When if comes to studying for your exams, there are multiple places you can go to get the expertise and knowledge you need to take the exam:

• Trailhead: This should be your first stop on any certification journey as you’ll be able to find the following for nearly every certification. View all Salesforce credential guides here.
  • Certification Exam Guides
  • Certification Trailmixes
  • Superbadges
• Community User Groups: There are user groups all over the world that are run by members of the community, similar to myself. The discussion topic of the meetings vary by time of year and by group, but some might be specific to certain certifications. I helped develop an annual (virtual) certification camp amongst the Boston groups that have met two years now and already have plans to come back in Fall 2023 to tackle another certification. Find all Trailblazer Community Group listings here.
• Training Courses: You will find many training courses out there, but I highly recommend you look at reviews and make sure the content in the course is accurate. If you are in the marketing space, I highly recommend you check out one of Sercante’s training courses in the new year. I’m taking the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Bootcamp Course starting in January and would love to see some of you there as well!
• Salesforce Certification Days: These are half day webinars that Salesforce periodically runs for multiple certifications such as Admin, Sales Cloud Consultant, Platform Developer 1, and more.
• Amplify Study Groups: Amplify is a nonprofit organization that amplifies historically excluded voices in technology, and those who support them, to become fearless leaders. They offer study groups to their members, typically on a seasonal basis, for certain certifications. You can also sign up to be a facilitator for these study groups as well if you’re looking to share your knowledge. Become a member here.
• Blog Posts: This one might seem obvious as you’re already on our blog site, but many Salesforce blogs share articles on specific certifications to help provide tips and tricks on how to pass them. Here’s the blogs that Sercante has produced so far:
  • 5 Steps to Pass the Pardot Specialist Certification Exam by Kelley Nunn
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Exam: All the Things to Study by Jordyn Jaffer
  • How to Pass the Pardot Consultant Certification Exam by Laura Curtis
  • 8 Tips for Passing the Marketing Cloud Administrator Exam by Mike Morris
  • A Pocket Guide to Earning the Salesforce Associate Certification by Joy Alphanso
  • Consultant Tips to Passing the Business Analyst Exam by Jordyn Jaffer (Upcoming)

Next Steps Toward Getting Salesforce Certified

We hope the resources and perspectives in this post are helpful to you as you work toward your own Salesforce certifications.

We would also love to hear from you on your certification journeys! Please leave a comment below or mention us online using the #certificationjourney hashtag.

Original article: Explore the Journey to Salesforce Certified

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Explore the Journey to Salesforce Certified appeared first on The Spot.

The Salesforce Winter ’23 Release Notes are out, and they include important features for marketers who are on the Salesforce platform. 

We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Winter. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways. 

So, if you’re using and managing marketing operations for your company or organization and want to know more about Salesforce CRM, then you’re in the right place. We’re going to cover everything you need to know about the Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release if you’re a marketer who uses Salesforce.

Marketing-Focused Platform Highlights  from the Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release

Marketers who use the Salesforce platform are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release. 

Some updates are changing the way we work to meet evolving technology demands. Others are saving us time by connecting the dots in a logical way. 

All we know is, this release includes big updates for people in the marketing world.

Highlight #1: MFA Enhancement for Smaller Orgs

The Winter ‘23 release will enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for direct logins to Salesforce for orgs with fewer than 100 active users. This update will then become enforced when the Spring ‘23 release comes around early next year. 

If your Salesforce org falls under the 100 active user threshold, it’s best to make sure you are fully compliant with the MFA requirement now and make sure any MFA-exempt user types are prevented from being affected by this update.

Any Salesforce org that has more than 100 active users will experience this update in a future release.

Highlight #2: Dynamic Forms for Standard Objects

Dynamic Forms are now finally available for Accounts, Person Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities! Dynamic Forms are components you can add to your Lightning Record Page to help customize your page layouts even more. 

Instead of using the standard page layout component, you can add specific fields and sections to the Lightning Record Page and add visibility rules to show users only what they need at that time. 

You can also automate the process of creating dynamic forms by migrating the Record Detail component to a Dynamic Form component with just one button.

Highlight #3: Salesforce Reports and Dashboards Updates

Salesforce continues to ensure that Reports and Dashboards get new updates with each release throughout the year. 

Enhancement #1: Filter Custom Report Types by Salesforce Fields (Beta)

Salesforce continues to provide enhancements to help ensure users can pick the best report type for any use case. Users can now filter custom report types by specific fields to ensure that report type contains the fields needed for the report. 

This feature is extremely useful for finding the right custom report type and allows users to filter by up to 20 fields that are required for the specific report they are building.

Enhancement #2: Review a Custom Report Type’s Structure During Report Creation

When getting ready to select a custom report type, users are now able to review the structure of that report type before moving forward with creating a new report. 

The details panel for the custom report type will now include a section that shows the relationships between the joined objects and provides useful information on the outcomes of the joins that were set up for the report type.

Highlight #4: User Permissions Updates

Improvement #1: Manage Your Permission Assignments with the User Access and Permission Assistant

Previously known as the Permissions Helper, the User Access and Permissions Assistant is an app through the Salesforce AppExchange to help analyze and report on permission assignments. 

Following the Salesforce best practice to approach user management by applying the principle of least privilege, this tool can help with monitoring and managing permissions across your org. 

Some features available through this tool are:

• Analyzing permissions by user, permission set, or permission set group to understand who has a particular permission.
• Converting a profile to a permission set
• Reporting on users, permission sets, or permission set groups to further understand who has what permissions.
  • You can also report on permission dependency and visualize it so you can see everything that’s dependent on a specific permission.

Improvement #2: Set Field-Level Security for a Field on Permission Sets During Field Creation

As Salesforce moves its customers toward using Permission Sets over Profiles, it will continue to push out new updates for Permission Sets to become more powerful. 

When creating new fields on an object, you will now have the ability to set field-level security on permission sets instead of profiles to help follow security best practices.

To use this new beta feature, you should enable it through the User Management Settings in your Salesforce Setup.

Highlight #5: Salesforce Flow Updates

You may have heard the phrase “Flow is the future” in Salesforce messaging over the past couple of years. This is because Salesforce is consistently releasing new Flow features to prepare for the retirement of Process Builder and Workflow Rules in the upcoming years. 

You should anticipate seeing awesome features for Salesforce Flow being included in every release moving forward for a while.

Here are some of our favorites from this release.

Improvement #1: Cut and Paste Flow Elements

If you’ve ever had to move a Flow element from one section to another you know how frustrating it has been in the past. We were required to copy a component, paste in the new section, update any references to the old version of the component, and then delete the old component. 

Salesforce has answered this frustration by providing a new feature where you can cut and paste a Flow element that eliminates all of the extra steps of cleaning up your Flow when you move an element.

Improvement #2: Specify Time Offsets in Months for Scheduled Paths

Before the Winter ‘23 release, Salesforce users were only able to set up scheduled paths by looking at the time since a trigger in minutes, hours, or days. 

This new Salesforce feature now includes the ability to schedule your path to run on the same calendar day of another month.

Improvement #3: Use In and Not In Operations to Find Related Records

Flows are getting new operators that can be used in Get Records, Update Records, and Delete Records elements. 

These new operators, In and Not In, can help users get related records without using a Loop element and reduce the number of SOQL queries and DML statements within the Flow.

Improvement #4: Select Multiple Records from a Table in a Screen Flow (Beta)

The new Data Table screen flow component is available to display a list of records on a flow screen. When building the screen flow, you can set the table to ready only or provide your users the ability to select multiple records to use later in the flow.

Improvement #5: Use Record-Triggered Flows to Update Related Records

The Winter ‘23 release brings a new feature where you can use record-triggered flows to update any record that is related to the record that originally triggers the Flow. 

With this feature, users are also able to set filters to only update specific related records instead of all related records.

Improvement #6: Workflow Rule Creation will no longer be available

The Winter ‘23 Release will now block Salesforce users from creating any new Workflow Rules moving forward. This is the next big step toward retiring Workflow Rules entirely as Salesforce continues to push users to move toward Flows. 

This update will not affect your current Workflow Rules as you will still be able to activate, deactivate, and edit your existing automations.

Check out our other blog post on migrating your current Workflow Rules and Process Builder to Flow through the new conversion to learn more about how you can prepare for the Workflow Rule retirement.

Highlight #6: Sales Cloud for Slack (Generally Available)

Since Salesforce purchased Slack in July 2021, they have been working hard to connect these two systems in a way that will improve Sales productivity. 

This release brings a new feature where sales teams can access important information and get notifications about their accounts and opportunities directly in Slack. The new Sales Cloud for Slack app provides the ability for your sales team to collaborate in opportunity-focused channels and to automate record update notifications to be pushed into Slack directly from Salesforce.

Highlight #7: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Updates

Please check out my colleague Erin Duncan’s blog post on all things Pardot from the Winter ’23 release.

Salesforce is getting bigger and better all the time

B2B marketers who come to Salesforce are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release get marketers closer to those goals by saving them time and resources. Contact the team at Sercante to get help implementing these enhancements in your Salesforce org. And leave us a comment below to let us know what you think about the Winter ‘23 Release.

Original article: Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release: Platform Highlights for Marketers

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release: Platform Highlights for Marketers appeared first on The Spot.

The Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release Notes are out, and they include important features for marketers who are on the Salesforce platform. 

We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Winter. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways. 

So, if you’re using and managing marketing operations for your company or organization and want to know more about Salesforce, then you’re in the right place. We’re going to cover everything you need to know about the Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release if you’re a marketer who uses Salesforce.

Salesforce Summer ’22 Release: Highlights for Marketers

Marketers who use the Salesforce platform are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release. 

Some updates are changing the way we work to meet evolving technology demands. Others are saving us time by connecting the dots in a logical way. 

All we know is, this release includes big updates for people in the marketing world.

Highlight #1: Enabling Person Accounts

For any organization who has considered Person Accounts, you know that you have to reach out to Salesforce Support to get them to enable Person Accounts in your Salesforce environment.

With the Summer ‘22 release, organizations are now able to enable Person Accounts on their own through Salesforce Setup. Similar to the previous process, enabling Person Accounts cannot be reversed from your Salesforce environment.

If you are looking to implement Person Accounts for your business and are looking for a partner to assist you with it, please reach out to us to find out more on how we can help you through the implementation process.

Stay tuned… we’re working on a blog about how Person Accounts work with different Salesforce products.

Highlight #2: Custom Field and Related List Updates

Improvement #1: Custom Address Field (Beta)

Salesforce Administrators have been wondering for years “how can I create a custom Address field so I can record multiple addresses on my customer records?” 

 Our questions have finally been answered with the new beta feature of creating custom Address fields on various objects. These custom fields will mimic the behavior of the standard Address fields you see on the Contact and Account objects. 

It will be interesting to see how new custom Address fields will play with Pardot if your organization decides to sync those fields over.

Improvement #2: Picklist Enhancements

Have you ever needed to inactive multiple picklist values and realize you’ll be clicking “deactive” for nearly five minutes? 

Salesforce has finally improved this process by providing the option to manage picklist values in bulk. 

This is a beta feature that you will need to enable in Setup. It gives you the option to select multiple picklist values at one time and perform various actions on those values.

There is also a new picklist feature where you can get an email sent to you if your custom picklist fields have more than 4,000 inactive values. You will then be able to bulk delete these inactive values through the feature above.

Improvement #3: Dynamic Related Lists

This is probably my favorite feature in this release. The introduction of Dynamic Related Lists will bring amazing opportunities to customize your org’s Lightning Pages. 

With this improvement, you can add the new Dynamic Related List – Single component on your Lightning Page. You’ll select the fields you would like to display, and then apply filters to ensure only certain records show in your new related list. 

You can create multiple related lists for the same object if you would like to display different groups of records, such as filtering on Opportunity Record Type.

Highlight #3: Reports and Dashboards Updates

Salesforce continues to ensure that Reports and Dashboards get new updates with each release throughout the year. Some features that were in Beta during the last release are now Generally Available, while there are new features entering the Beta phase.

Improvement #1: Find the Right Report Type for New Reports (GA)

This improvement was highlighted in our Spring ‘22 Release Article when it was a Beta feature. It is now Generally Available to all Salesforce customers.

Improvement #2: Edit Multiple Fields on the Report Run Page (GA)

Similar to the improvement above, we highlighted this feature in our Spring ‘22 Release Article when it was just a Beta feature, and it is now Generally Available to all Salesforce customers.

Improvement #3: Create Reports Based on Selected Salesforce Objects (Beta)

Have you ever had to scroll through all of your report types to try to find the ones that contain the specific object you are looking for? This new Salesforce beta feature allows you to filter the report types on the specific objects you need to ensure are in your report. 

This feature, along with Improvement #1, compliment each other in a way that will help you find the right report type faster.

Improvement #4: Use Median as a Summary Function in Reports

One of the smaller features in this release, this improvement provides the ability to summarize your fields in a report based on the median action along with the previously available actions.

Highlight #4: Salesforce Flow Updates

You may have heard the phrase “Flow is the future” in Salesforce messaging over the past couple of years. This is because Salesforce is consistently releasing new Flow features to prepare for the retirement of Process Builder and Workflow Rules in the upcoming years. 

You should anticipate seeing awesome features for Flow being included in every release moving forward for a while. And be sure to check out this solution from Mike Morris on how to manage Salesforce campaign activation with a simple flow.

Here are some of our favorites from this release.

Improvement #1: Use Formulas as Flow Entry Conditions

Flows will now have the opportunity to use formulas as entry conditions instead of just field value criteria. This improvement provides so much more flexibility then we previously had, and it’s something I am very excited to implement in my client’s Flows to help optimize them even more.

Improvement #2: Add Section Headers Screen Flows

Screen Flows will also receive a couple updates during the Summer ‘22 release. 

You will now be able to add a Section component to your Screen Element that can be collapsible to make the screen flow completion more efficient.

Along with this feature, there will be a new beta feature to place Name and Address Record fields directly on your Flow Screens. 

Through this feature, your screen flows can become even more efficient as you can have these fields populated with either existing values and even have autocomplete functionality with the Address record fields.

Improvement #3: Manage the Run Order of Flows from Flow Trigger Explorer

The Summer ‘22 release brings the ability to easily update the run order of your record-trigger flows without needing to open and edit the individual flows themselves. 

Through the easy-to-use UI, you can ensure that your record-trigger flows are executing in the exact order you specify for an individual object.

Improvement #4: Convert Workflow Rules to Flows with the Migrate to Flow Tool (GA)

Salesforce will continue to push its customers to Flow in preparation of the retirement of Process Builder and Workflow Rules. Thankfully we are provided tools to help make the migration process a lot easier than just creating flows ourselves. The Migrate to Flow Tool was already available for certain Workflow Rules in the previous release, but now supports more kinds of workflow rules. THe tool will now support the following:

• Equal to null
• Not equal to null
• Rule criteria formula

Stay tuned for a  blog post on migrating Workflow Rules and Process Builder to Flow through this tool to learn more about it. 

Highlight #5: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Updates

Probably the biggest update to Pardot during the Summer ‘22 release is the name change to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement that was announced recently. 

The name will always be Pardot in our hearts and therefore deserves its own section for feature highlights from this upcoming release.

Here’s a musical tribute to the Pardot name for your listening pleasure.

Improvement #1: Conditional Completion Actions

Every Pardot Admin probably screamed with glee when they saw this feature was finally being released. We are now able to include conditions on Completion Actions to ensure that subsets of your prospects are meeting the criteria for certain completion actions. Previously we could only include completion actions that fired for each prospect that completed the asset so this improvement will help all companies enhance their marketing automation efforts.

If you want to read more information about this feature, check out Marcos Duran’s preview blog post exclusively on Conditional Completion Actions.

Improvement #2: Review Email Bounce Data in One Report 

The Summer ‘22 release will bring a single report for you to review all of the bounced email addresses from the past year for each email sent. This is a huge improvement from needing to view individual list email reports in order to find the prospects that had bounced email addresses for that email.

Check out Laura Curtis’ blog post on the Pardot Email Bounce report to learn more about this awesome feature.

Improvement #3: Get Improved Mailability Insights on List Email Reports 

The Summer ‘22 release will bring four new fields to your list email reports:

• Total Prospects on recipient lists
• Total suppressed Prospects
• Total unmailable Prospects
• Total duplicate Prospects

These new fields will provide a more accurate picture of who is receiving your emails and give you more information to help with your prospect management decisions.

Highlight #6: Marketing Cloud Updates

Please check out my colleague Kirsten Schlau’s blog post on all things Marketing Cloud from the Summer ‘22 release.

Salesforce is getting bigger and better all the time

B2B marketers who come to Salesforce are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release get marketers closer to those goals by saving them time and resources. Contact the team at Sercante to get help implementing these enhancements in your Salesforce org. And leave us a comment below to let us know what you think about the Summer ‘22 Release.

Original article: Salesforce Summer ’22 Release: Platform Highlights for Marketers

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Salesforce Summer ’22 Release: Platform Highlights for Marketers appeared first on The Spot.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a platform brought into the Salesforce ecosystem in 2013 when Salesforce acquired ExactTarget (a company that previously acquired Pardot). It can be considered a one-stop shop for all things digital marketing. That includes email marketing, social media, mobile marketing, website building, and more through various studios and builders. 

When Salesforce made the announcement that Pardot was being brought under the Marketing Cloud umbrella and rebranded as “Account Engagement,” marketers throughout the ecosystem were shocked and confused. 

We were always trained to view Marketing Cloud and Pardot are two separate entities that solved separate problems for companies, but the rebrand challenged that notion. I highly recommend checking out Andrea Tarrell’s post on the matter. 

This article is going to give a “hi, how are you” the main tools on the platform previously called Marketing Cloud and now known as Marketing Cloud Engagement. 

Before we do a deep dive into each Marketing Cloud Engagement product, it’s important to remind us of all of the recent Salesforce Marketing Cloud product rebrands. Check out the infographic below for a refresher.

Email Studio (Marketing Cloud Engagement)

Email Studio is the primary product in the Marketing Cloud suite and typically what most people think of when they hear “Marketing Cloud.” 

This studio focuses on email marketing and is complemented by Content Builder (discussed below) in ensuring that your team can construct the perfect email template for sending. Marketers will use the product to preview, test, and send one-off emails that can be highly customized through template elements and Marketing Cloud’s scripting language: AMPscript. 

Content Builder

 As mentioned above, Content Builder complements Email Studio as it is the backbone of personalizing your email templates. Marketers not only work on building out their emails through Content Builder, but can also build out landing page templates, and text message content. 

One great feature of this product is that you can build content blocks to use across all Marketing Cloud Studios that keep your brand consistent across all platforms.

Journey Builder (Marketing Cloud Engagement)

If you have ever used Pardot, then you know how powerful of a tool Engagement Studio is. Think of Journey Builder as a similar product that will help automate marketing campaigns across multiple channels. 

Due to its powerful features and connection to Email Studio, the Marketing Cloud rebrand brought Journey Builder and Email Studio together as Marketing Cloud Engagement. The journeys that are built through this tool can contain multiple paths for customers, use Einstein features, and send tasks and data to Salesforce through Marketing Cloud Connect.

Advertising Studio (Marketing Cloud Advertising)

Advertising Studio works tremendously well with Journey Builder to help your organization connect with customers beyond email, text, and social messages. 

The tool will give you access to produce ads across multiple digital platforms, including social media: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms such as Google and YouTube. Using your Salesforce data, along with lookalike data from Facebook and other audiences, you can target new prospects who are most likely to become a customer in the future.

Social Studio

Poor one out for Social Studio. Salesforce’s newest soon-to-be-retired product (November 2024) was my first introduction to Marketing Cloud and definitely one of my favorite tools to use – I started using it right when they retired the Marketing Cloud Social Specialist Certification and I’m so sad I never achieved it. 

Previously known as radian6, Social Studio was focused on social listening, measurement, and engagement. Marketers could schedule social posts, monitor their social accounts, and listen for keywords and hashtags through the Social Studio platform. It was complemented with Social Studio Automate, a tool that would process and sort social media content in an automated fashion and could send data over to Salesforce. 

Check out the following blog to learn more about other Social Listening products you can explore for your company: Social Studio Sails into the Sunset.

Mobile Studio

Similar to the other studios, Mobile Studio is a one-stop-shop for sending messages to a consumer’s Mobile Device. These messages can be crafted within Mobile Studio and can be delivered via SMS, MMS, or Push Notifications via an app. 

You are even able to monitor opens and clicks on your SMS messages like you can do with your email messages. When considering this product it is best to start small with unidirectional messages before you implement a full-scale messaging channel that could offer support via mobile. 

Web Studio

Web Studio is a lesser known studio within the Marketing Cloud suite, but it’s a great tool for building out your organization’s web experiences. 

Using the CloudPages application, you are able to create dynamic web pages with personalized content and provide a seamless experience for your customers. Companies can collect data from website visits and form completion to further personalize the experiences provided to customers online.

Datorama (Marketing Cloud Intelligence)

Datorama is an amazing marketing analytics tool that unifies your company’s data from each marketing platform you use so you can report on all data at once. 

Platforms that you can connect include Google, Instagram, Youtube, and various other platforms through out-of-the-box connections available on the Datorama platform. Using data from your Marketing Cloud instance, you can track ROI and growth across all of our email, social, advertising, web, and sales channels.

Do you consider yourself a Datorama expert? Sercante is expanding our team and looking for a Datorama Architect to join our analytics practice and implement Datorama across multiple clients and business needs.

Interaction Studio (Marketing Cloud Personalization)

Interaction Studio has many use cases, but as the new rebrand states, it is the perfect tool for providing an amazing level of personalization for your customers across your web experiences. 

As your customers/prospects complete actions on your website, Interaction Studio will take this behavior to dynamically update messaging across web pages to tailor the experience to that individual customer. The tool will update their experience again to ensure messaging correlates with the new product interest — given that a customer’s behavior is the best indication they are interested in a new product.

Salesforce CDP (Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform)

Another product that’s been through the rebrand treatment is Salesforce CDP. It’s a tool that can compile every data point across multiple platforms for each customer in your database. 

This tool compliments your other Marketing Cloud products as you can use this data from all of your platforms to create very specific segmentation lists. This enables companies to ensure the right prospects are being contacted at the right time about the perfect product/solution for them to help increase ROl across the business.

Pay attention to the big picture

Marketing Cloud can definitely seem like a daunting product if you don’t understand too much about the products/tools within it. It’s important to not overwhelm yourself with all of the features each product has to offer. Instead, focus on the tools that would benefit your organization if you decide to implement Marketing Cloud. 

These are just basic overviews of the most popular Marketing Cloud topics so our team advises that you fully investigate and learn about a product before you make any purchasing decisions.

If you are looking to implement Marketing Cloud for your business and are looking for a partner to assist you with it, please reach out to us to find out more on how we can help you through the implementation process.

Original article: A Quick Intro to Each Marketing Cloud Tool

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post A Quick Intro to Each Marketing Cloud Tool appeared first on The Spot.

Earning the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Certification is the first step to becoming a full-fledged Marketing Cloud consultant. But, it doesn’t come easy. 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud has robust capabilities. And there are lots of nuances and specific features to understand before you can pass the test. So a word of caution, this isn’t something you can cram for the night before if you don’t have experience working inside the platform.  

Getting hands-on Salesforce Marketing Cloud experience

As someone who has worked within Pardot their entire marketing automation career, I was in a unique position when I decided to start studying for this exam.  Fortunately, Salesforce Trailhead had just started using their Trailhead Simulator tool on Marketing Cloud modules.  

Even though I couldn’t do anything in the simulator like I could with a regular Trailhead playground, it was still beneficial to get an actual look into Marketing Cloud when I didn’t have access otherwise. Between the Trailhead Simulator and many YouTube Marketing Cloud product demo videos, I was able to have a decent understanding of the Marketing Cloud environment and how to build and send an email through Email Studio.

For Pardot peeps dipping their toes in Marketing Cloud

For anyone else coming from Pardot when studying for this exam, I recommend also comparing concepts between the products.  

It was helpful to connect Marketing Cloud terminology to the Pardot terms I used on a daily basis in order to understand Marketing Cloud better without having the full-hands on experience that is necessary for this exam.

As mentioned throughout this article, you should make sure you have a great understanding of Marketing Cloud and Email Studio by trying to get as much hands-on experience as possible, even if you don’t have access to an actual Marketing Cloud environment.

The following guide includes all the things you should study as you’re preparing for the Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Certification exam from my Pardot-centric perspective.

As always, hands-on practice is going to equip you with the experience and knowledge you need to pass the test. Combine that with real-world application you can get by networking with people who use it regularly, and you’ve got yourself the golden ticket to passing. 

Marketing Cloud Email Specialist certification exam topics and weighting

Here’s what the Marketing Cloud Email Specialist exam grading breakdown looks like.

1. Subscriber & Data Management: 28%
2. Marketing Automation: 19%
3. Content Creation & Delivery: 18%
4. Email Marketing Best Practices: 15%
5. Email Message Design: 13%
6. Tracking & Reporting: 7%

Subscriber & Data Management

Key Concepts and Terminology

• Lists
• Data Extensions
• Subscriber Key: a unique identifier for a subscriber
  • If email address, each email address can only exist once
  • If populated by another unique identifier (customer number, CRM ID, etc.), each subscriber key can only exist once and email address can be used multiple times ***best practice
• Primary Key: Uniquely identifies row of data in Data Extension
  • Not required
  • Enables marketers to add/update data when importing to DE
  • When a field is marked as a Primary Key, that field becomes required
  • If no Primary Key, the only way to import data is to Overwrite all data in the DE
• Send Relationship: Can be understood as the answer to “In this Data Extension, which field defines the person that is being sent to?”.
  • The “person” relates to the Subscriber Key, so this is typically chosen for the send relationship
• Sharing and Visibility
• Profile and Subscription Center
  • Profile Center:  Web page where subscribers enter and maintain the personal information that you keep about them. When you import a list in Email Studio, you can import attribute values for your subscribers. Subscribers can see this information in the Profile Center and update and add to it.
  • Subscription Center: Same concept as an email preference center
• Import Wizard: Used to manually import information from files into Data Extensions or Lists
• Import Activity: A step available in Automation Studio that allows you to automate file imports to update Data Extensions or Lists. The files typically come from the Import folder in an FTP account
• Data Filter: A group of criteria that segments a subscriber list or data extension. Used to apply complex segmentation rules to your subscriber lists or data extensions
  • Data Filters can be used in Filter Activities in Automation Studio
• Filter Activity: Apply the logic of a data filter you select to create a group or data extension in Automation Studio
• SQL Query Activity: A step available in Automation Studio that retrieves data extension or data view information matching your criteria by using SQL statements, then includes that information in a data extension

Lists

• All subscribers belong to the All Subscriber list
  • Contains email address, subscriber key, status and any attributes created
• You can create as many lists as needed
  • You can create groups within each list to further segment the lists
• Public lists show in the Subscription Center
• Subscribers can be added to lists manually or through a file import
• List attributes = name, address, etc. 
  • Cannot exist without a subscriber

Data Extensions

• Data extensions are tables that contain data
• Subscribers can be added to data extensions or updated through the SOAP API
• Data kept in a data extension relates to a subscriber but does not fit in the subscriber profile and preference attributes for one of these reasons: 
  • Subscribers have one-to-one info whereas data extensions can have one-to-many

• Info is related to subscribers through a 3rd piece of information in the data extension

• Data relationships relate your data extensions to each other and subscribers
  • These are necessary for information to be used in emails
• External key = a unique value that identifies data relationships

Lists vs. Data Extensions

• Data Import: Data is scrubbed at import for lists and scrubbed at send time for data extensions
• Structure: Every data extension has their own structure and can contain different fields, while each list has the same attributes
• Both can use Import Activities
• Both accept text, date and numeric data types
• Use the list model when: 
  • Lists have 500,000 subscribers or less
  • Prefer simplicity over performance
  • Don’t need to import quickly
  • Limited number of subscriber attributes
• Use the data extension model when: 
  • Lists have 500,000+ subscribers
  • Want to support multiple subscriber data sets
  • Send global messages
  • Want fast import speeds
  • Sending triggered messages
  • Use SOAP or REST API
  • Want a flexible subscription model
  • Don’t need to add subscribers manually

Unsubscribes

• Global unsubscribe
  • Managed by Salesforce Marketing Cloud
  • Subscriber has requested not to receive any type of communication from any account, regardless of sender
  • Most email addresses on list are spam traps or spam complaints

Marketing Automation

Automation Studio

• Used to execute multi-step marketing and data management activities on an immediate, triggered, or scheduled basis
• Makes email sends, SQL queries, file imports and more happen automatically
• Overview page: 
  • Shows each automation’s status
  • Shows error information in line with the corresponding automation 
  • Allows you to run automations on an individual basis if necessary
• Configure and manage automation activities on the Activities page

Journey Builder 

• A campaign planning tool that enables you to design and automate marketing campaigns
• Similar to Engagement Studio Programs but with more features like sending SMS messages and targeting with paid ads

Behavioral Triggers 

• Let you add customers who abandoned items/services to data extensions
  • Uses Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Stores data for 30 days

Triggered Sends

• Sends an email in response to a subscriber’s action.

Content Creation & Delivery

• Emails are created in Content Builder
• There are four creation methods: 
  • Template – Choose a template you have created
  • HTML – Paste your custom HTML code
  • Text Only -Create from text only or a code snippet.
  • Existing Email – Use one of your Classic or Content Builder saved emails
• Personalization Strings let you insert subscriber attributes into emails
  • Can appear in the subject line, preheader, or in the content
  • Also called merge fields or substitution strings
  • Can insert system data personalization strings using AMPscript
• AMPscript is the proprietary SFMC scripting language
  • Used for personalization, formatting values, relational data, inserting/updating data
  • Case sensitive
  • Must be in a block with open and close delimiters
• Send Flow guides you through the necessary steps to send your email
  • Step by step process of selecting an audience, send time, etc.
• Subscriber Preview is a rendering of an email as it will be viewed by a recipient. Can see previews for any subscriber.
• Test Send allows you to send an email from the Subscriber Preview to your own inbox to view how the email appears in your email client.
  • If you unsubscribe from a test email that you send or access the subscriber’s profile center and make changes, those changes permanently apply to that subscriber
  • If the subscriber you select for the preview has a status of unsubscribed, bounced or held, the generated preview does not deliver any test send

Email Message Design

• A/B Testing tool sends two versions of your email to two test audiences from your subscriber list. It tracks which version receives the highest unique open rate or highest click-through rate over a specified time period and sends that version to all remaining subscribers.
  • Can test: 
    • Subject line
    • Preheader
    • Different emails
    • Content
    • From name
    • Send time
• Content Detective is a tool in Email Studio that helps you identify spam triggers in your email content
  • Mirrors the logic used by spam-filtering software to identify words, phrases, and patterns that are likely to trigger filters and recommends a resolution to each identified problem
• Approvals in Content Builder lets you create a process to review and approve content
  • Submit an email into a process which requires an approver to approve it before it can be sent to an audience
  • Can be launched from Email Creation Flow, the Content Builder grid, or the Approvals dashboard
  • Can use a standard or two-step workflow:
    • Standard: Submitter, one or more Reviewers, Approver
    • Two-Step: Submitter, Approver

Tracking & Reporting

• Tracking is a collection of your email data that allows you to view metrics such as email sends, opens, clicks, undeliverable messages, email forwards and other metrics
  • Can create a subscriber list from tracking data to monitor subscriber and list performance or target list with future emails
  • Data is stored for 6 months
  • Uses a 1×1 pixel transparent GIF image in emails to track information
    • Automatically inserted into every email unless you use an HTML-Paste template
  • Tracking data for deleted subscribers and contacts is retained in anonymized format and can’t be linked to a specific record
  • Can select multiple emails and compare high-level metrics for each message
  • Conversions Tracking allows you to track the customer traffic and revenues generated by links within your emails
    • Requires you to insert tracking code into your website
• Reports can be run through the Tracking tab in Email Studio and send to your inbox or FTP
  • You specify the parameters, file format, delivery method, and when to run the report
  • Reports can be automated through Automation Studio

Go forth and pass the test

Now that you know what to study, it’s time to get to work. But remember, simply memorizing these concepts isn’t going to get you there. You have to combine studying with hands-on experience and real-world application. 

Can’t get hands-on experience in Marketing Cloud? Salesforce has a few simulators you can use in Trailhead to get a feel for it.

Freaking out about the exam? Or have tips for your pals? Let us know about it in the comments.

Original article: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Exam: All the Things to Study

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Exam: All the Things to Study appeared first on The Spot.

The Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release has been out for nearly a month now, and it included important features for marketers who are on the Salesforce platform.  

We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Winter. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways. 

So, if you’re using and managing marketing operations for your company or organization and want to know more about Salesforce, then you’re in the right place. We’re going to cover everything you need to know about the Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release if you’re a marketer who uses Salesforce.

Salesforce Spring ’22 Release: Highlights for Marketers

Marketers who use the Salesforce platform are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release. 

Some updates are changing the way we work to meet evolving technology demands. Others are saving us time by connecting the dots in a logical way. 

All we know is, this release includes big updates for people in the marketing world.

Highlight #1: Salesforce CMS Name Change to Digital Experiences

If you’ve enabled the new Pardot Lightning Email Builder or Lightning Landing Page Builder already, then you’ve heard of Salesforce CMS. 

Salesforce CMS was a tool within Lightning Experience that provides the ability to curate and share content, manage multiple languages, and control who can create what content. However, along with a slew of Salesforce product name changes, Salesforce renamed the tool Digital Experiences to stay consistent with the former Community Cloud change to Experience Cloud. 

There are no changes to the features that were available with Salesforce CMS, and Salesforce even allows users to type Salesforce CMS in the App Launcher to reach Digital Experiences.

Image Credit: Salesforce

Highlight #2: Salesforce Reporting Updates

Marketers on Salesforce have so many options when it comes to viewing marketing reporting metrics. Every tool in your tech stack has some sort of native reporting tools. But that data is limited to the tool.

Feeding that data into your marketing automation platform (MAP) gives you access to more insights when you can combine datasets. But you’re still limited.

But connecting your MAP to Salesforce platform reporting tools unlocks a whole world of data insights. We’re talking about sharing data from Pardot and Marketing Cloud with Salesforce Reports and Analytics Studio (Tableau CRM). 

Here are the reporting updates marketers on Salesforce will want to know about.

Improvement #1: Easily Find the Right Report Type for New Reports (Beta)

Building reports in Salesforce can be very confusing at first if you don’t know what report type to look for. So, this improvement is definitely an exciting one. 

With the new enhanced report type selector, users can view their most recently used report types and see if a report type is standard or custom.

Image Credit: Salesforce

Another feature provided in this update is the ability to view the objects and fields available with the report type. And you can also see what reports have been created by yourself and other users using the report type.

Image Credit: Salesforce

Improvement #2: Edit Multiple Fields Inline on the Report Run Page (Beta)

Salesforce users and marketers both have a need to update information on the fly while viewing a report in Salesforce. This new feature provides the ability to edit fields within your report on multiple records. 

You can make as many changes as you want, as long as the field is not locked, and then save all of the changes at once without rerunning the report. Fields that are related to other fields within that same record will update those additional fields as well once you save your changes within the report. 

The example below is a preview of what happens when the Account on an Opportunity is updated and the Employees field shows as pending. Seeing this screen means the field will update as well once the record is saved.

Improvement #3: ​​Automatically Tune Your Dashboards to Your Business Goals with Dynamic Gauge Charts (GA)

If you have ever used a Salesforce Dashboard to track your campaign metrics, then you might have used a Gauge Report chart before. 

Gauge charts typically track performance toward a certain goal that you set in place when the dashboard was created. This new feature will provide you with the ability to track your performance dynamically instead of setting a singular goal for the year. 

This means Salesforce will use your report metrics and dynamically update your goal as it responds to your business and performance whether it is a positive or negative change.

Improvement #4: Personal Information Security Updates

Marketers should always ensure that their customer data is compliant and respects the customer’s personal preferences. With that in mind, Salesforce has released a new update to help hide customer’s personal data from other customers who are in the same portal or community. 

Enabling Enhanced Personal Information Management will replace the current Hide Personal Information setting available in Setup and will secure even more PII data on the User record. The new feature provides the ability to select which standard and custom fields are considered PII in your Salesforce org.

Companies should be aware that customers will no longer have access to their own personal data in the community or portal for the fields you select to hide on the User record. This feature will become enforced in all Salesforce organizations during the Winter ‘23 release.

Salesforce is getting bigger and better all the time

B2B marketers who come to Salesforce are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release get marketers closer to those goals by saving them time and resources. 

Contact the team at Sercante to get help implementing these enhancements in your Salesforce org. And leave us a comment below to let us know what you think about the Spring ‘22 Release.

Original article: Salesforce Spring ’22 Release: Platform Highlights for Marketers

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Salesforce Spring ’22 Release: Platform Highlights for Marketers appeared first on The Spot.

I seriously felt imposter syndrome as a professional in the Salesforce and Pardot community — but I overcame those feelings by learning everything I could through Pardot training courses and blogs.

As a new member to the Sercante team and overall Salesforce consulting ecosystem, I was struggling with imposter syndrome over the past few months. 

Part of that is because my journey with Pardot hasn’t been the most conventional. I had a big skill gap from taking two years off from using the platform. But, I’ve been able to combat imposter syndrome by sharpening my Pardot skills. 

My Pardot journey and the imposter syndrome that followed

I became an accidental Pardot admin back in 2018 when I was working for the Atlanta Braves. That’s when they implemented Salesforce and Pardot for customer and email marketing management. 

I learned as much as I could from our implementation partner and through modules on Salesforce Trailhead. But, I hadn’t yet achieved expert-level knowledge. And I didn’t feel like I could engage with the Pardot community due to my lack of knowledge in Pardot features the Braves didn’t use. 

I earned my Pardot Specialist Certification while working for the Atlanta Braves. But, I decided to leave the Atlanta area in late 2019. I moved to the Northeast, which is where I’m from.

Learning Pardot while working as a Salesforce admin

I quickly found a job as a Salesforce & FinancialForce administrator for a specific department at Northeastern University, my alma mater. Northeastern didn’t use Pardot, so there was no way for me to continue learning within an actual Pardot environment. 

I knew I wanted to get back into the Pardot ecosystem eventually, but I didn’t know when.  So, I applied to join the inaugural Salesforce Marketing Champions class as a way to prove to myself that I can still be attached to Pardot. 

I regretted submitting my application right away. I didn’t think Salesforce would pick someone with less than two years of Pardot experience and who wasn’t even working with Pardot at the time. Luckily, I was chosen to join the Marketing Champions class and soon after achieved my Pardot Consultant Certification by continuing to study as much as I could.

Finding my way back to working with Pardot

Fast forward to September 2021, an old colleague from the Atlanta Braves recommended that I join the Sercante team. I was fortunate enough to be offered the job and joined a team that mainly focuses on guided implementations with clients. 

After learning more about the members of not only my team, but the entire company, I slipped back into being anxious and wondering if my boss would believe that I didn’t know as much about Pardot as I said during my interview. There were so many concepts that I didn’t have actual experience with. I worried about being able to articulate things correctly during my client calls. 

Fortunately, I found my way to the right place. There are a vast number of resources available within the Pardot community (and within Sercante) that helped me fill the gaps. These Pardot resources eased my anxiety, and I know I’ll use everything I learn for the rest of my time in the Pardot ecosystem.

What is imposter syndrome?

You just read the long story about my Pardot journey and may be wondering, “What is imposter syndrome anyway?” 

As I referenced above, imposter syndrome can be feelings of anxiety over not knowing certain topics and being called out for that knowledge gap. It can also come in the form of putting yourself down even though you have evidence of your success and knowledge. 

If you have ever felt like luck was the main factor when reflecting on your achievements, then you may be struggling with another form of imposter syndrome.

Why people in tech jobs experience imposter syndrome

A 2018 study showed that 58% of people working in technology jobs experience imposter syndrome. Within that survey, 66.88% of people working at Salesforce said they have experienced the feeling of imposter syndrome.

One reason that people in tech feel may like impostors is because they have a different background from the people they work with. Or they may have recently started working in a new position and they are feeling doubtful about their ability to take on new responsibilities and manage new tools.

Imposter syndrome is usually prevalent within the Pardot ecosystem. That’s because there’s limited knowledge of the platform outside of those who use it. Like other Salesforce cloud admins, many Pardot admins get thrown into the role when their company migrates or upgrades their marketing automation tool. 

The “accidental admin” roles can make people feel like they’re on their own and don’t have anyone to discuss issues or ideas with. It can also be very depleting to train your coworkers on a platform that you don’t have much experience on. Without having other companies or admins to benchmark against, you may believe that you cannot possibly be considered as a valuable resource in the Pardot community.

How to continue to sharpen your Pardot skills and combat imposter syndrome

If you read “Pardot Admins & the Lurking Impostors” back in 2017, written by Andrea Tarrell (the CEO of Sercante), then you may already have an idea of how you can fight your imposter syndrome. We’ll be looking into those ideas in detail to help us determine the best strategies to hone your Pardot skills.

Here are my favorite resources for keeping my Pardot and digital marketing skillset up-to-date so I feel more confident in my work.

Salesforce Trailhead!

Trailhead is typically the first place I recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about Salesforce as a whole or an individual product offered by Salesforce. Although there is not a lot of content on Pardot as there may be on other products, there are still a couple trails and a Trailmix you can use to enhance your skills:

• Increase Engagement and Nurture Leads with Pardot Lightning App
• Automate Marketing to Businesses with Pardot Lightning App
• Prepare for your Pardot Specialist Credential: By completing this Trailmix, you are one step closer to becoming a Salesforce Certified Pardot Specialist.

Salesforce Pardot community resources

Salesforce Pardot community resources (these are created and hosted by the Pardot team at Salesforce) are also a great place to learn information on various Pardot features.

There are tons of free webinars and downloadable content, as well as a detailed outline of what you need to know when first getting started with Pardot. I also highly recommend joining the Pardot Community Group where you can ask questions and get answers from other Pardot users around the world.

Pardot user groups

Along the same lines as using resources from Pardot, you can also join a Pardot user group that is based where you live. These are user groups that are led by community members who go through the Trailblazer Community User Group process.

It is very easy to see what user groups are active in various areas by going to the Trailblazer Community Groups page. I recommend checking out other areas as well as most user groups are still meeting virtually and are open to anyone to join. Most user groups are preparing their 2022 schedule right now, but here are six of the most active Pardot User Groups, in North America, from 2021 to look out for:

• Atlanta Pardot User Group
• San Francisco Pardot User Group
• Tampa Pardot User Group
• Austin Pardot User Group
• Portsmouth Pardot User Group
• Twin Cities Pardot User Group

Get Salesforce certified

As Andrea previously mentioned in her article, “If a cert makes you feel better, do it.” Getting certified in various Salesforce products and features has helped me personally combat my imposter syndrome as it shows me that I do know my shit when it comes to certain topics.

The Pardot Specialist certification is the first cert recommended for anyone who has experience as a Pardot Admin. If you feel as though you are prepared to take the exam by the end of January 2022, you should take advantage of Salesforce’s 30% offer to save some money when signing up for your exam. I also recommend reading my colleague’s post on her tips to pass the Pardot Specialist exam.

Pardot Admin Bootcamp training course

Finally, I recommend signing up for Pardot training sessions from a trusted instructor or Salesforce partner to learn about topics more in-depth from Pardot experts.

Sercante offers Bootcamps for Pardot Admins and mini-workshops on specific Pardot topics. These courses are run by the consultants and experts who work at Sercante and provide hands-on experience that will help you retain the knowledge you learn.

Get the Pardot skills you need to feel a sense of belonging

Imposter syndrome is something that most people will have to deal with at some point in their professional lives. I know I have experienced it in each of my roles and am still struggling with it in my current role at Sercante. 

When it comes to battling imposter syndrome within the Pardot ecosystem, there are many resources that you can use to continually improve your Pardot skills and prove to yourself and others that you do belong.

If you are experiencing imposter syndrome as a Pardot admin, user, or consultant and have additional tips on how to combat it, we would love to hear from you in the comments!

Original article: How to Conquer Imposter Syndrome in the Pardot World

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post How to Conquer Imposter Syndrome in the Pardot World appeared first on The Spot.

It’s time to prepare for the Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release and how it will affect your Pardot instance.

We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Winter. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways. 

So, if you’re using and managing Pardot for your company or organization, then you’re in the right place. We’re going to cover everything you need to know about the Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release for Pardot admins and users.

Salesforce Spring ‘22 release dates

Here are the Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release dates:

• December 16, 2021: Pre-release org signup
• December 22, 2021: Release notes available
• January 7, 2022: Sandbox preview starts, release site available, and release Trailhead module launches
• January 10, 2022: Release overview deck and feature matrix available
• January 14, 2022: Release weekend
• February 4, 2022: Release weekend
• February 11, 2022: Release weekend
• February 4-11, 2022: Release Readiness Live

Salesforce Spring ’22 Release: 6 highlights for Pardot users and admins

Pardot users and admins are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release. Some updates are changing the way we work to meet evolving technology demands. Others are saving us time by connecting the dots in a logical way. All we know is, this release includes big updates for people in the sales and marketing world.

1. Pardot Lightning Email Builder enhancements

The newer Pardot Email Builder in Salesforce Lightning Experience is getting quite a few upgrades during this upcoming release. Salesforce is continuing to improve the connection between Pardot and the Lightning Email Builder in an effort to make it a seamless experience between the two.

Enhancement #1: Push emails from Lightning Experience into Automation Rules and Completion Actions

The Winter ‘22 release brought us the exciting news of being able to use Lightning Email Content in Engagement Studio when you mark those emails for “Automation” use.

After Spring ‘22, Salesforce has further enhanced this feature by enabling you to push emails from Lightning Experience into Automation Rules and Completion Actions in the same manner as you did when you enabled emails for Engagement Studio.

Enhancement #2: Specify Tracker Domain for Automated Emails in Lightning

Now that there have been enhancements in using your Lightning emails for various automation tools in Pardot, Salesforce is looking to provide other upgrades to the Lightning Email Builder.

This Spring ‘22 release will enable you to specify the tracker domain for automated emails in Lightning. All you have to do is create your emails and activate them for use in automations to receive the option to specify the tracker domain.

Enhancement #3: Choose which Email Template Types are Available in Salesforce Engage

Customers who have Salesforce Engage will also see an exciting enhancement that will further optimize their connection between the marketing and sales teams in their organization.

With the Spring ‘22 release, you can choose which Email Template Types you want to make available in Salesforce Engage. This allows you to specify whether you want Pardot or Lightning Email Templates available to your sales team. You can even determine which Lightning Email Template folders you want to make available for sales to ensure they cannot use templates in marketing-specific folders.

Enhancement #4: Create Custom Components for Email Template Builder

We were all excited to start creating emails in the drag-and-drop editor in Salesforce Lightning Experience. But then we encountered limitations with the components you drag into your template.

Spring ‘22 provides the option to create custom components for the new drag-and-drop editor. You’ll need to create a metadata package and ensure you test it in a sandbox before you deploy for use in your production environment.

What you should do: Evaluate how your team creates Pardot email templates.

These enhancements to the drag-and-drop email editor give Pardot marketers even more tools to push them toward the Lightning Email Builder. You should evaluate what your team’s current selection of email templates are and determine if some are better managed through the Lightning Email Builder. 

Document your team’s current processes and talk to them about what works and doesn’t work well for them. Also, pay attention to how much time they are spending on these tasks so you can determine if it makes sense to invest in upgrades or external resources.

2. Pardot Lightning Landing Page Builder enhancements

Marketers were very excited to learn about the new drag-and-drop Landing Page Builder that Salesforce recently released. As with the Lightning Email Builder, Salesforce has ensured that you will continue to get improvements to this new tool.

Enhancement #1: Customize Pardot Form Styling in Lightning Landing Page Builder

The new Enhanced Landing Page Builder previously did not allow you to customize your Pardot Form within your Landing Page without adjusting the Layout Template code. With the Spring ‘22 release, you are able to edit styling such as colors, fonts, margins, and more within the Lightning Landing Page Builder by clicking on the new Style tab when you drag your Pardot Form into the builder.

Enhancement #2: Set a Redirect for Unpublished Landing Pages

When a Pardot Landing Page was previously archived, users were redirected to the website that is set up through Pardot Settings. The Spring ‘22 release provides an option to set a custom redirect URL for an enhanced landing page that you unpublish. 

You’re able to set this up by editing the redirect field before you unpublish the landing page.

Enhancement #3: Add Scripts to Lightning Landing Pages

The Lightning Email Builder will soon be able to support script code in either the header or footer of an individual landing page. When you publish your landing page, the code blocks are pulled into the source code for the landing page. 

Organizations will find this feature useful if they want to use JavaScript to support their Google Analytics tracking.

Enhancement #4: New Prebuilt Templates

The Lightning Landing Page Builder will now provide prebuilt layouts for your landing pages in the Spring ‘22 release. This new change will help you drag in new rows and columns easily as you customize your landing page. 

The breadcrumbs feature at the top of the editing panes will help you navigate to a row so you style and add new columns.

What you should do: Evaluate how your team creates Pardot marketing assets.

Similar to the enhancements to the Lightning Email Builder, these enhancements will help marketers move from the Pardot Landing Page Builder to the new Lightning Landing Page Builder. You should evaluate the Landing Pages you already have built and in use within Pardot and determine whether it is a good time to move those landing pages into the new drag-and-drop builder.

3. Get your Pardot automations ready for email privacy changes

As you may have heard, Apple has announced Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) in mid-2021 as a way to protect their users and hide email marketers from tracking the customers they send emails to. 

These changes will force email marketers to look at other email metrics, outside of email opens, to properly report on their email sends moving forward. Along with this, Pardot admins will need to do a full review of their automations to determine which rely on email opens so they can update the criteria appropriately.

Fortunately, the Salesforce Spring ‘22 release will include a reporting page that will provide an overview of which of your automations rely on email opens at this time.

This reporting feature will allow you to see how many Engagement Programs, Dynamic Lists, and Automation Rules have been configured to rely on email opens. 

You can access this report by going to the Pardot Reports tab, navigating to the Marketing Assets section and finding Open Rules under the Automations section.

What you should do: Utilize this report and update all automations.

It is strongly recommended that you update any automation that relies on email opens to start looking at other high-value metrics, such as email clicks. You should also ensure that everyone who views reports on your email sends understand that email opens is not a reliable KPI anymore and should not be used to consider an email’s success.

4. Prepare for the retirement of Pardot drip programs

Pardot Drip Campaigns are near the end of their lifetime in the Salesforce/Pardot universe. Although they won’t be retired with this release, Pardot plans to retire all Drip Campaigns during the Summer ‘22 release. If you have never used the Drip Programs tool (now known as Engagement Studio), then the feature was removed with the Winter ‘22 release.

Pardot will still provide access to reporting for Pardot legacy Drip Programs, and the company has moved them to a new location with the Spring ‘22 release. Head to the Pardot Reports tab in Pardot Lightning, navigate to the Automations section and click Drip Programs. 

This option is not accessible to Pardot orgs that did not use Drip Programs previously.

What you should do: Start planning for the switch to Engagement Studio.

If you haven’t already made the switch to Engagement Studio, then now is definitely the time to start considering it.

Here are resources to prepare for switching to Pardot Engagement Studio:

• Pardot Engagement Studio for Salesforce Lightning
• Everything You Need to Know about Pardot Engagement Studio

5. Extending Pardot through integrations

Salesforce is highly customizable thanks to integrations. And new ways to extend Pardot through integrations are going live all the time.

Here are a few Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release enhancements that use integrations to extend Pardot functionality.

Enhancement #1: Improvements to the Pardot Slack Connector (Beta)

If you tried out the Pardot Slack Connector (beta) when it was introduced in the Winter ‘22 release, you may be excited to hear that we are already receiving improvements to the feature.

The completion actions that you were already able to set up to send Slack Notifications for your marketing assets are now available in the Pardot Lightning Email Builder Experience. There is also a new Usage tab available for the Slack Connector so you can get a complete view of which marketing assets are connected to Slack via Completion Actions.

Enhancement #2: New Improvements to the Pardot API v5

The Pardot API v5 became available in the Winter ‘22 release and will be seeing some improvements with the Spring ‘22 release. 

There will be 13 more objects available through the API and updates to 3 of the objects that were already accessible. This release will also bring a new Tracking and Consent JavaScript API that will give you control over how Pardot tracks page views.

Enhancement #3: Improvements to Pardot Extensibility

Pardot announced the release of Marketing App Extensions to collect prospect data in third-party applications and bring that data into Pardot during the Winter ‘22 release.

The Spring ‘22 release brings a new checkbox on the Marketing App Extension object that will make it easier and more seamless for marketers to activate their External Activity Objects for automation.

What you should do: Integration brainstorming session

Have a brainstorming session to discover ways you can use integrations more effectively in your Pardot instance. You can kickstart the session by completing the sentence “wouldn’t it be nice if Pardot…” as many times as you can. 

Then, rank those sentences you created and focus on the ones that will have the greatest impact on your marketing efforts. If implementing those integrations you identified through your brainstorming goes beyond your team’s capabilities, then reach out to Sercante Labs to find out how you can make it happen.

6. Additional features to look out for

Pardot included a few extra features in this release that don’t really fit any of our above topics, but are definitely still important to understand ahead of the release.

Here are a few additional Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release enhancements that can help with reporting and segmentation. 

Enhancement #1: Einstein Engagement Frequency

This feature (only available to Pardot Advanced and Premium Editions) helps reduce email fatigue by scanning individual prospect engagement behaviors to help you understand the optimal send for marketing emails. 

You will need to enable this feature through Marketing Setup in Salesforce and ensure you have enough data for the model to train itself within 72 hours. Once the model is trained, you will be able to use a new prospect field called “frequency category” to segment prospects in lists or Engagement Studio.

Enhancement #2: Einstein Account Tier

This feature (also only available to Pardot Advanced and Pardot Premium editions) helps you segment on your prospect accounts in a new way by using another model to start assigning tiers to your accounts. 

To use it, you will need to map the Account Tier field to a custom Pardot field to read in the values that the Einstein Key Accounts Identification model starts assigning to your Accounts. You’re able to easily use this field in any automation as the field will be listed under the “Prospect Account field” criteria type that you can choose. 

Enhancement #3: Improved Thresholds for Metrics Guard Filtering

This feature applies to all Pardot editions by improving filtering on what’s considered to be bot-click activity. The Metrics Guard will now look for any bursts of email open and email click activity that surpass thresholds that are put in place. Your team will no longer see activity from those IP addresses until the activity falls below the threshold again.

What you should do: Consider using these AI features to improve your email marketing and reporting capabilities.

These features are nice additions to any Pardot org. There is minimal work your team needs to do outside of setting up the features. Then you can sit back and enjoy the benefits they bring to your segmentation and reporting.

Pardot is getting bigger and better all the time

B2B marketers who come to Pardot are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release get Pardot marketers closer to those goals by saving them time and resources. 

Adding more user-friendly design capabilities addresses a major pain point for many Pardot customers. And extending Pardot through integrations and feature upgrades is preparing Pardot orgs of all sizes for the future. Contact the team at Sercante to get help implementing these enhancements in your Salesforce org and Pardot instance. And leave us a comment below to let us know what you think about the Spring ‘22 Release.

Original article: Six Big Pardot Enhancements from the Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Six Big Pardot Enhancements from the Salesforce Spring ‘22 Release appeared first on The Spot.